


One Too Many Martys

by orphan_account



Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: Angst, But do we really know anything about Marty2's character?, Gen, Out of Character, Present Tense, Time Travel, Timeline 2 Marty McFly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:07:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29908461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: We watched Marty McFly 1 return from 1955 at the end of the first film and witness the Marty who grew up in a town with a Lone Pine Mall instead of Twin Pines flee in a time-travelling DeLorean, never to be seen again in the trilogy. What happened to that Marty?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	One Too Many Martys

**Author's Note:**

> This spawned in a single day when thinking about how the BTTF timelines worked, and what could have happened to Marty 2. It was just going to be a few lines on tumblr, but grew into this in a feverish night of writing and it's being posted as-is. I'm posting this before I lose my nerve and I know it doesn't explain clearly because it's more about impressions without slowing down for clear exposition. You can view the reasoning behind the timelines and what a more ruthless Doc might have done to protect reality  on tumblr here. https:// ficmylife4.tumblr. com/post/644950800944250880/back-to-the-future-wild-theories

The gun jams.

The gun jams and all the air leaves Marty’s lungs; he’s standing there empty on legs he can barely feel while the terrorist scowls at the body of the rifle and gives it a shake. Shakes it like Jennifer shakes the TV remote at her place when it doesn’t work and she always raises her eyebrows a little and quirks her lip to the side when she does it, like she’s barely holding in a little sigh as she gives the old thing one more chance before she has to get up and change the channel herself and he might never see her make that face again he might never see her again he--

Marty chokes on the next breath in and he pulls back, still under the shine of the blue van’s headlights. The terrorist propped up through the sunroof strikes the base of the gun with his palm but he isn’t looking at Mary, he’s looking at the gun, and Marty pushes himself to the side, in front of the big white truck for what little cover it’s got, and the DeLorean is standing open straight in front of him a few yards away. He throws himself over the distance and crashes inside, turns back to grasp at the upright door when he fumbles an automatic reach out instead. He can already hear the VW van’s engine as the gunman yells when Marty’s eyes snag on Doc’s legs. They’re sprawled on the ground, but the rest of the b- the rest of him is hidden behind a big tire and the back corner of the truck. 

Marty pushes all thoughts of Doc out of his brain and heaves the door down. He grabs at turning the keys and doesn’t know if the dashboard really is a mess of wires and gauges and lights that Doc set up or if he just can’t think, can’t read them, he needs to get a cop, he needs to get somebody, he knows how to handle the wheel at least and his throat hurts like a splinter is lodged in the back of it and it cuts deeper as he gasps too fast and too shallow, but he kicks down the pedal and  _ drives _ .

~~~bttf~~~

When Marty is six, JJ Dawson steals his toy car. It’s a Matchbox Triumph and it’s blue. It was the only one on the shelf that was blue instead of red and Marty’s mom let him get it right away without waiting for a special occasion when it might be gone because he was good that day and didn’t jump too much in place when she told him to stay away from the shelves in the boring store before that one. During a break at school, JJ saw him playing with it and said it was dumb. Marty turned away to keep running it along the floor around a book and JJ grabbed it out of his hand. He pushed him down when Marty tried to stand up. 

The day before, JJ shoved over the Connect Four he and Susan Grant were playing and spilled the checkers and ruined the game. He told the teacher it was an accident. The day before that, JJ and two of his friends stole the ball Marty was playing with and passed it all around him while jeering about sharing, until one of them threw the ball at his shoulder hard enough to knock him into the boy next to him, and the teacher scolded both of them when she found them pushing each other. 

Marty goes home and he tries to keep up a smile but there’s an itching under his skin. 

“Is there something on your mind, son?”

Marty looks up from where his chin was dipped down to his chest. Dad’s calm blue eyes are level on him. One of his arms is straight, propping him against the armchair with one shoulder hitched high, the other low and hand tucked into his pocket, one ankle crossed over the other. He’s relaxed, but immoveable Marty knows.

Marty shrugs. His t-shirt drags a little against the leg of the couch behind him where he sits on the floor.

Dad nods a little. He looks over the side table with a photograph and a little porcelain dish. It’s quiet. Marty looks over and Dad is still there.

“At school,” Marty says. Dad looks at him. Marty fidgets, pushing his spine back against the cushioned couch leg. Dad waits. Marty bursts, “JJ keeps bothering me.”

Dad’s head gently nods as he digests. Marty looks at his knees. In his low and patient voice, Dad invites, “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Marty itches and when he talks it makes it worse and the words come faster and his voice pipes higher with the outrage and even more than just this week spills out. When he’s finished, George McFly is still leaning against the armchair with a pensive look on his face. Marty is sitting ramrod straight on the floor, away from the couch leg, chin raised. 

“You’re right, that doesn’t sound very fair.” Marty sits even straighter. Dad meets his eyes and smiles gently. “Why don’t we see what we can do about that?” 

Dad stops and talks to Mrs Dawson at school the next week. His face is as gentle as ever but his voice got firm sometimes. Marty didn’t quite understand everything they said, but Mrs Dawson bristled and shuffled and finally pursed her lips and later Marty got his car back and JJ rolled his eyes and turned his back on him with a huff but left him alone. Dad told him his teacher was there to make sure they were treating each other fairly and not getting in the way of letting each other learn, and he should make sure to clearly tell someone when they shouldn’t touch his things or should stop, and if they don’t, don’t retaliate but tell the teacher. Don’t whine, just be straightforward, and it might not help at first, but if it keeps going on the pattern will be noticed. 

Dad puts a hand on his shoulder as they stroll inside, and even when he takes it away to reach out to Mom and tell her he can already tell dinner will be fantastic from the smell, Marty still feels the security like an imprint left behind. The itching under his skin’s been washed away and he feels light. 

Dad always knows what to do.

~~~bttf~~~

Marty’s still blinded by the bright bluish-white light and he’s going way too fast for that, so he slams on the brakes even as he twists the wheel to avoid the stand he can’t see anymore but knows was in front of him and to the left. 

The DeLorean’s back wheels skid a little but he turns and jounces to a stop. The visored helmet of the hazmat suit smacks against the back of his head, mostly caught between his neck and the back of the seat. Marty’s muscles ache from how tense he is. He presses and unwieldy, gloved hand over his forehead as if that would help his vision come back faster, not willing to poke himself in the eye, and strains his ears for the van’s tires or the yelling of the gunman. There’s nothing, and Marty’s gasped breathing booms in his ears. He leans over the steering wheel in case they can see him through the window, but his eyes are clearing now, and maybe that’s why it suddenly seems so much darker.

No, it is darker. Marty blinks away the last spots and stares out into the blackness beyond the window. He can make out some vague gray impressions of straight lines and boxy shapes, but it’s way too dark. Where are the streetlights that kept the Lone Pine Mall parking lot bright 24/7? Where’s that damned VW van’s headlights? Where’s his own headlights? 

Marty looks down at the dashboard, and there are a lot of  Doc add-ons, but he locates the headlight switch. 

He was sure he was alone in the dark, and when the lights rise they prove it. Marty stares forward at a concrete wall that couldn’t be there stretching out to each side. There’s some big generator set against the wall, with two square pylons of bright plastic set in front of it like in a parking garage. A parking garage. Marty twists in the seat to see as much as he can through the windows. Gray concrete, scuffed and crumbling, make up two solid walls in front and to the right of him. The headlights don’t reach far enough to see to the left. To the back, he can make out a concrete half-wall between thick pillars maybe 7 feet apart, and the concrete ceiling looks

maybe 15 feet high. Way too high for a parking garage, but a basement wouldn’t have those half walls with no windows or anything. And a parking garage uses the basement, nobody wants to park up high and have to get back down.

A rumbling, mechanical sound draws Marty’s eyes back to the front. It grows louder and Marty shrinks down behind the wheel until a seam opens up on the wall and an industrial elevator is revealed. Marty freezes when he sees a man in a bland navy uniform with fluorescent stripes down the arms, legs, and front slouched against the wall looking bored beside a flatbed cart covered in boxes. Disbelief and the echo of the VW van’s screeching wheels and  gunshots keeps him still, not computing a relaxed stranger with the boredom of a routine graveyard shift hanging off him. 

The man presses something in his hand and the cart beside him moves forward. Marty’s eyes catch on the bottom of the cart as he realizes it’s not rolling. In the bright light in the elevator, too bright for his headlights to be noticed, he can see clearly the lack of wheels. The lack of anything. The cart is just...hovering as it moves forward. 

The elevator man’s hand moves and the cart stops up against the wall, beside another cart Marty sees now. The cart drops down with a whine and hits the floor. 

The elevator door closes and the light drops again. 

Marty is frozen, but when he looked toward the cart he saw something else. His eyes are fixed on a letter folded on the dashboard, looking to have slid against the base of the windshield. Written across the front is: Marty.

~~~bttf~~~

Marty is thirteen when he meets Doc Brown. 

He’s in the woods near Douglas Needles’ back yard after sneaking away from the party. Marty can be friendly but he wasn’t friends with anyone there, and after he used up all his smalltalk everybody started repeating it. Marty tried to listen to his mom about not taking over a conversation, but he tended to get excited and start talking and not stop about what was so interesting, and he wouldn’t stop anybody else from talking about it, but it almost seemed like he liked it too much and they stopped wanting to talk about it when he did, and started edging away from him. So Marty was stuck with not talking about anything good, and the classmates he was comfortable with weren’t there so he couldn’t even enjoy the quiet. He laughed too much as it felt more and more awkward as everyone was being so polite, and Needles never stopped pointing his smile at him like there was a hilarious joke and he was waiting for Marty to leave so he could laugh about it, and Marty was pretty sure he overheard some kids mention making nice with him after they heard what a bash his sister Linda had for her latest birthday and that everyone went home with a gift-bag. 

So, to the woods. Mom wouldn’t know he ducked out early and he’d chill for a while. See some sights.

Marty kicks at a mostly-buried black rock and wishes he’d brought a magazine.

A crash draws his attention and Marty pauses. It’s September and a lot of leaves are on the trees warm orange and mustard yellow and sulky red, but there’s a decent carpet of dried leaves on the ground that rustle and swish. He wanders toward the source of the noise. 

There’s a tall man in a brown sweater and brown pants with dirt ground into the knees under a white lab coat hanging onto a swaying branch with both hands with his foot stuck in a knoll of a tree. He’s mumbling about angles and Archimedes and looking offended but willing to forgive the tree for its rudeness once he’s out of the predicament, and Marty finds himself smiling. The stranger finally heaves, managing to yank his foot from the tree, but yelps as he’s suddenly in the air, the branch he’s clinging to bouncing him once before he drops. 

Marty steps forward without thinking, but there’s a chuckle dancing in his voice as he asks, “Whoa, are you okay?”

The white-haired man spins around to look at him. His eyes might’ve widened, but they were pretty wide already. His hair was sticking up in wild tufts. 

“You,” he says.

Marty stopped and the crunching of leaves quieted, the wobbling branch settling too. “Me?”

“What?” The man startles. “I don’t know you. What about you?”

“What-”

“No, I think I should be the one asking questions here.” The stranger put his nose in the air and looked sidelong at him. “What are you doing here?”

Marty’s jaw hung open a second. “Wh- Um. I was walking. Doesn’t the guy trying to fight a tree deserve a couple more questions?”

The man scoffs but Marty looks over at the tree and this time notices a metallic shine of some something sticking out of some leaves above their heads. It’s about a foot long, thicker than a ruler, and maybe has a green wire wrapped around it. “Is that a bottle rocket?”

“No. Yes. Well, it started as one, but I was working on propulsion systems and scaling down the first experiments after that business with the-- er,” the man’s hand, which had been waving through the air as he explained, stops and flaps awkwardly like he is shooing away the words. He squints his eyes at him. “It’s no matter.”

The tucked away enthusiasm is familiar and Marty doesn’t know much about propulsion systems or whatever but he’s had enough of today dampening excitement and falling back on small talk. “That’s rad,” he says. “Me and a friend tried to set off a regular rocket before, but we got caught. Never thought about where it’d come down and we were really close to the road.” 

The man looks at him and smiles like he’s not quite sure he should. “Ah yes, generally an enclosed environment is safest, and cut down the variables if effects reach farther. But it’s rather against the point when distance is part of what you’re going for here.”

“Yeah,” Marty pushes his hands into his pockets. “Experiments, are you a scientist or something?”

“Yes.” The stranger absently tugs at the front of his white coat, rocking back on his heels and then forward. “Doctor Emmett Brown,” he introduces himself, and leans forward to stick out a hand.

“Marty McFly,” Marty gives back, and shakes his hand. Emmett Brown grips a little too tight and makes a decisive up-down shake and then he falls back on his heels again, looking all around at the trees around them like he’s got something to look for.

The rocket’s not that high but Brown seems a bit uncoordinated. Marty’s here and he likes to help people out. “Would you like me to get it down for you? If it’s not going to explode or anything.”

“Ah.” Brown’s eyes light up and he smiles. “That would be kind of you. No explosions, I’m sure of it. By now.” He jolts a little and looks at Marty’s perfectly-reasonable-height-thank-you and then up at where the not-rocket is wedged into the branches. “If you’ll be safe, of course.”

Marty smiles, already plotting his route, and says, “I think I can handle it.”

“And if you’d like,” Brown continues, his words slowly speeding up and brightening as Marty picks his way over the tree roots and looks up the trunk, “You could see the next iteration take off with me. I’ve got some ideas and it’ll be more impressive than the rocket you tried before, I can promise you that!”

One hand grabbing the base of a branch and pulling to test its strength, Marty looks over his shoulder up at the man. He’s standing tall and he’s smiling and his fingers are twitching as if he’s already building in those new ideas. Marty smiles back and his father’s voice in his reminds him to be respectful for a first impression.

“Sounds like a plan, Doctor Brown.”

The doctor blinked at the address. Before he turns away to heft himself onto the branch, Marty thinks he looked at Marty maybe a little too long. But his voice picks up below him growing into an enthusiastic ramble about the modifications and the scientific principles behind it and Marty climbs.

Marty thinks he probably imagined that look.

~~~bttf~~~

Marty is sixteen and he plays the guitar. He and a few friends mostly play covers of rock songs they like and Paul loves to dress like he’s aiming to join Van Halen to wig out his parents, but it’s casual for the rest of them. They practice together and it’s fun and Marty calls it the band because it makes his older brother Dave cluck. Marty might not know what he wants to do grown up but he doesn’t have to yet. Dave got an internship with a big company he’s sure will lead to a real position and he’s started wearing suits and lecturing about dressing for the job you want and showing off as much of the business-speak he can when he talks. It would be more annoying if he honestly did want to push Marty to follow in his footsteps, but it’s clear he just wants to bask in learning something he’s good at and lecturing Marty gives him an excuse to talk about it and sound wise and adult. Dad’s a writer and avoided just such an office job, but he smiles when Dave stands straighter to tighten his tie while describing the latest issue he caught and how the supervisor says he has a good mind for the trickier details.

To each their own, right?

Marty is at Doc’s place, idly strumming a few chords while Doc fiddles with something that makes a sad little zap before Doc pulls his gloved hands away in a hurry. While Doc is tugging over a clipboard to make a few notes, and Marty already knows he’s going to pick up the pen that doesn’t work and throw it away and get one that does work and realize it’s too awkward with his gloves on and throw that away, Doc asks Marty if he has any performances lined up. The courthouse square gets plenty of gymnasts or hula hoopers or singers practicing out in public that draw some eyes. 

“We mostly practice at Kevin’s place,” Marty says. “It’s not really for other people.” Lorraine sometimes mentions Marty could use the confidence boost of playing to an audience, but he’s happy with a smaller friend group and doesn’t crave the popularity she wants to encourage him toward. A lot of times his and the guys’ music practice ends up with them just listening to their favorite vinyls. Marty knows he’s good and his fingers are fast through tough riffs, but he doesn’t have anything to prove. 

“I’m gonna keep playing at home, but it’s not my future.”

Doc nods and absently tosses a pen over his shoulder. “Yes indeed. While my dreams of being a cowboy never did pan out, and the work I’m doing now is always engaging,” he sweeps his arm out triumphantly, work gloves waving in his grip like a flag, “I do enjoy keeping up with the horseback riding occasionally.”

Marty grins at the easy acceptance and taps the pick against the fingerboard, once-twice, the matter settled. Things have always been easy with Doc.

~~~bttf~~~

In a car he was never supposed to drive, Doc left him a letter he shouldn’t have known he’d need to. It tells Marty to wait where he is without drawing attention and Doc will be there at 9:15pm October 21, 2005. The display in the front of the car tells him it’s 8:36pm October 21, 2005. It’s unbelievable but Marty’s brain keeps replaying how loud the rifle was when Doc fell and the idea that he could see Doc again crowds out everything else, so much more important than time travel, and Marty can’t do anything to screw that up. 

He grips the steering wheel, rests his forehead against the cool rubber, and closes his eyes. The DeLorean’s dark now, in the dark garage, echoing silence, and it feels like he’s the only person for miles. Marty waits and time drags.

~~~bttf~~~

When Marty is eight, he does not set fire to the living room rug.

~~~bttf~~~

It feels like a golf ball is lodged in his throat. 

“I… stay here.”

Marty blinks rapidly and fights to swallow it down. 

“He… The other me, the earlier me. He stays there? With everyone?”

Blindly, Marty looks up at Doc standing there with fierce concern splashed over his face. Doc always had such big reactions, Marty was always sure where he stood with him. He thought Doc couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. He’d thought.

Marty tries to smile but it’s weak. “What, did you like him better than me?” 

“Marty.” Doc Brown grips his shoulder and his scattered energy is tamped down but his eyes are as intense as ever as he peers at him. “Friends cannot be measured that way. I don’t have-- numbers-- a calculation-- for it, but  _ believe me _ that knowing you enriched my life in ways I never expected.”

It’s raining. It’s raining and it’s landing only on his face and it’s warm but it’s okay because Doc might love science but he knows sometimes weird things and freak weather events are to be experienced and not picked apart. He won’t say anything about this one.

“It wasn’t choosing between you, Marty. We’re all different, moment to moment, year to year. You wouldn’t believe what I was so stubborn would never change as a teenager.”

Doc as a teenager. A sound almost like a laugh squeaks in his throat. Marty’s hand had raised and was grasping onto Doc’s jacket, the future fabric weirdly slipper in his fingers. “Doc before the doctorate, freaky,” he offers.

Doc smiles and he jostles Marty a little, hand warmly squeezing his shoulder. “I’m here and I’ll be here. I’ll visit. We’ll “chill at my pad” he pronounces roughly, then raises his head, “I’ll get a pad. Document forgery and background checks are remarkably easy to get around with access to future technology and a time machine, really.” 

Doc as a criminal. Marty wants to huff except the image of Doc fumbling with that revolver he had no idea how to handle, and his stiff posture after he tossed it away, before the terrorist gunned him down splashed across his vision and his hands shook.

“I’d always want you to have a home and the best life possible, Marty,” Doc Brown continued. “And it wasn’t about choosing for either of you. Time and the forces around it are so unexplored and we’ve already seen how physics has bent at brushing across a paradox. I don’t know what damage can be done to the space-time continuum or the universe at large. But where one left, one returned, and events followed that led to you leaving your time.”

Doc didn’t set it up. He wouldn’t have done that to him. He just went through time like you’re supposed to, lived his life, and he met Marty and liked him and they chatted and knew how to listen to each other getting so deep into their interests others would’ve tuned them out and they shared cooking disasters and ate breakfast together and worked on Doc’s gadgets that hardly ever worked but always taught him something. Doc showed him where the key to his place was kept and never asked why but let Marty come by whenever he needed, when other people and their expectations were too much or he just wanted to see Doc or just wanted to take a nap in that fuzzy gray-blue blanket that Doc always left out on that corner of the couch for him, the only blanket or towel in the place that was never press-ganged into sudden service as a fire extinguisher or hazardous waste rag and replaced.

Doc told him he wrote the letter as worst-case scenario. He was hoping he was wrong, that the changes would be self-contained or maybe the universe would even have an in-built mechanism to smooth out the little inconsistencies and there would only ever be one Marty. But Doc was a scientist and he didn’t argue with facts. He worked on making what they had to deal with, better.

“Marty.” Doc sighed. “I have another friend. And he’s a great deal like you.” Doc met his eyes. “And he’s different, too. Lonelier. A little clumsier. Trying to do right, determined like you, but like he had less to rely on.” Doc was grave. “I don’t know what it would do to him if I told him his actions changed his timeline, his world, and everyone he ever knew.”

Marty flinched and he knew it wasn’t even him. Maybe he couldn’t live with them, maybe Dad wouldn’t call him son, but he could still see them in this time. He could know they were there and happy and remembered him. He doesn’t want to think of the guilt the other Marty would face. 

“Beyond all the practicalities of the two of you existing in the same time and place and how that could be hidden from anyone who can not be permitted to learn about time travel and what chaos they could wreak,” Doc went on. “Beyond all the details of regular life we could try to plan around, I don’t know enough how you might be affected physically. Or the world around you. Physics, the building blocks of the universe! And as far forward as I’ve ever gone yet, no one knows enough about time to be sure.”

Doc checks over Marty. He’s too numb to muster up any reassuring words but he tries to smile at him. Doc doesn’t seem to believe it, but he says, “I’m not a biologist but I know enough to know cells are constantly being replaced. At this time, I hope the material differences between you, Marty, and Marty, are enough to prevent any clashes, though limited proximity would be best.”

Marty’s brow furrowed. “Hope? I know you’re lax with safety regulations sometimes, Doc, but with the fabric of the universe tearing, is that the time to take the risk?”

His throat closes over at the word time. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to use casual phrases like that again without a leaden stomach.

“Experimenting,” Doc Brown exclaimed. “Discovering! We’ll watch for danger signs, we’ll keep a record, but the risk has to be taken to learn if there is a problem or what works! Sometimes safety regulations are too confining.” Some of the excitement dims. Doc took a step closer, looming up like he can shield Marty from his own words, “The safest might be to send you so far, either way, you couldn’t recognize the world around you. And a lifetime had passed.”

Marty’s breath hitched. He didn’t say it, but Doc meant Marty’s lifetime. Marty who was the youngest in his family, with how Linda rags on him about being the baby. Standing on the packed dirt of the night, beside a parking garage dead silent at the bottom as flying cars landed at the top, because Doc knew he would need air to process all this, Marty is seventeen and he tries to imagine outliving everyone he loves. 

And Doc would take the risk because it was for him. So he could see them happy. So he could be at a time when he could maybe call up and disguise his voice and get to talk to them. So he wouldn’t be totally alone in this new life of his. 

Marty looks up at Doc and he can’t speak. But they’re friends. They’ve known each other for years. Doc doesn’t need him to.

~~~bttf~~~

Marty is seventeen and in 2005 and Doc Brown is dressed in some shimmery blue jacket with accordion sleeves and telling him a story he can barely believe. But Doc is there, talking to him, wringing a crumpled notebook in his hands, and his eyes are as bright as ever and Marty can shove away the memory of seeing him fall and thinking he was dead. 

Marty had thrown himself at the car door and tumbled out at the first sight of Doc peering around and they'd crashed into each other. Too soon Marty had dragged himself back to stutter out his questions, but Doc had asked him to sit down. Marty had blown up at the too-reasonable request and cliche forewarning of terrible news, and was definitely not sitting casually on the hood of the crazy, wired-up, time-travelling DeLorean still holding _plutonium_ inside it that he just saw the terrorists Doc stole it from attack them for, _remember that, Doc_! Half-embarrassed from his outburst but still wild-eyed, Marty accepted Doc's next suggestion to climb over the half-wall of the parking garage's lower level to get some air. Marty had tugged the top of the yellow hazmat suit down, feeling stifled, and it hung from around his waist, his terror sweat dried and uncomfortable but better with the chill night air blowing by him. He looks to the sky but the lights of the flying-flying-cars and signs hit him and he looks down again at Doc. He breathes deep, focusing, and shuffles everything he was hearing to the side for a moment so he can brace himself before dealing with it all. He breathes, puts his shoulders back like he could face this, and absently twitches his head to the side with a straight hand lifted to smooth his hair over. 

Doc’s words fades away as he stares at the gesture. Marty lowers a hand and looks at him. 

“I should’ve brought a comb,” Doc says. “Toothbrushes. Deodorant!” At least Doc was flailing a bit too, even if he’d had more time to prepare for this talk than Marty. “You never put a hand in your hair,” Doc mumbles, and there’s a pit hidden behind the words Marty doesn’t want to go near, doesn’t want to fall into. “Just smooth over it.” Doc is looking at him and not looking at him at the same time. “You get it from time with your father.”


End file.
